Replication data for: Partisan strategies and supply-side economic policies in advanced nations 1960-1990

The dissertation examines how political parties, unimpeded by the set of factors (namely, rational expectations among economic agents, the organization of the domestic economy, and the evolution of the world economy) that limit the ability of governments to manage the short-term economic cycle, play a central and sustained role in the formulation of economic strategies designed to shape the supply side of the economy, thi s is, the provision of input factors, capital and labor. Whereas right-wing cabinets trust to private agents the determination of the optimal levels of savings and investment, left-wing governments rely on the public sector. To validate this model, the dissertation examines the public provision of fixed capital, the level of public spending in human capital formation (through general education and vocational training), the nature of the governmental strategies towards the public business sector, and tax policy, for all OECD nations from 1960 to 1990. The quantitative analysis is then followed by the historical examination of the political and economic strategies of two very dissimilar cases- -the Spanish socialist government and the British conservative cabinet in the eighties--in order to capture the dynamic process through which partisan governments develop their preferred economic policies. In both cases, parties are shown to optimize their goals along two dimensions, which in turn affect the timing, nature and success of the partisan economic policies: on the one hand, the economic environment, this is, the set of constraints imposed by the organization of the domestic economy as well as the international fluctuations of the business cycle; on the other hand, an electoral dimension, since economic strategies are, first, timed to the popularity standing of the cabinet, and, second, geared to build a winning electoral coalition behind the party in office. The dissertation concludes by discussing the key role the partisan model should play in the field of comparative political economy as well as the remedies it brings to the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of previous theoretical models of economic policy-making.